Nihar Kulkarni: Managing Director and Partner at Roswell NYC

^{Joe Fox 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:27:18}
However, on Joe Fox here president at Grove today we've got another episode of retain grow thrive. I'm very excited to welcome one of my good friends. Nihar. He is an incredible individual with a very, very cool background. He heads up and is the managing partner of Roswell at the moment, and they're just coming off the back of a Webby Award for Diane von Furstenberg.

^{Joe Fox 00:00:27:21 - 00:00:45:21}
A couple of big announcements to you joining the gorgeous advisory board. But yeah, I'm super excited to have Nihar here today. He's a good friend of mine, someone I really respect in the industry. And I love what they're doing over at Roswell. So, Nihar, thanks for coming on, my friend. Absolutely. Joe. I heard about this.

^{Joe Fox 00:00:45:21 - 00:01:01:03}
We talked about it in Austin when I saw you last. And, I was super excited about this and back at you. And by the way, congratulations on you being the president over at Galway. That's a huge opportunity. And I can't think of a different person that would be you can do a better job than you.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:01:01:06 - 00:01:25:09}
Awesome. I thank you so much my friend. Really really appreciate that. So in saying that, let's dive into this Webby Awards Diane von Furstenberg thing. That's yeah, massive, massive achievement. I know you guys have, a very big partner of of Shopify. You incredible Shopify work and and you can't work in general. But like this is obviously particularly aimed at that.

^{Joe Fox 00:01:25:09 - 00:01:48:05}
So can you give me a little bit of a insight into the award, what it means and what success is coming from after that reward? Hundred percent of award? I appreciate that you appreciate the recognition there. I mean, the Webby Awards are the, you know, the most coveted award in the, digital sphere. They are like the Oscars of the internet as they're kind of done.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:01:48:07 - 00:02:09:06}
You know, we're having a good month right now. And we were, we announced, as you mentioned, I was asked to be on the gorgeous marketing advisory board, the Webby. And we also graduated of the Shopify premier tier, that top 6.8% of agencies across the world. So it's a good month at Rise. While I appreciate that, and the Webby Award really is, the cherry on top.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:02:09:07 - 00:02:29:29}
I mean, it's something that we've been talking about at Roswell for over a decade. We've been we were founded back in 2011. And we were talking about, you know, all the, we would watch and track all the, the Webby Awards over time. And never did I think that there would be, that there would be an opportunity like this, and that it would come so soon.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:02:29:29 - 00:02:58:18}
But we worked really hard for it. The team, was, working on the, DVF project just before, after the holiday, break. They really wanted to revamp the site for 2025. We performed a full UI UX audit. We had, our creative director and and design team go in and actually design, the site from, of a wireframe standpoint, but also understanding the brand assets.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:02:58:20 - 00:03:23:00}
The most important thing is, is that when you're when you're doing UI, UX design, everybody has a homepage, everybody has a product list, product detail, cart checkout. It's all pretty standard. There's best practices. And a lot of times you have to color within lines in order to make sense. I've seen, you know, crazy sites out there that have, incredible weird experiences, but is again, a convert.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:03:23:03 - 00:03:45:05}
And so that's why lying is bringing that creativity and best practice, together, to be able to create an experience that allows a seamless, journey for the user from the entire path of purchase journey, but still maintains that brand ethos. And that's, I think, what we were able to accomplish with DVF. And it looks like the, judges, agreed with us.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:03:45:05 - 00:04:04:22}
I mean, the thousands of submissions, we were one of the five chosen for nominees, and we end up winning the People's Voice award shortly thereafter. The award shows May 12th. We're super excited about that. Myself and my young man, our senior director of marketing, along with, along with Claudia Gonsalves, the VP of e-commerce, is going to be joining us as well, too. And, we get a five word speech on stage. Super exciting. And we're in the history gazing.

^{Joe Fox 00:04:04:22 - 00:04:31:22}
Amazing. Yeah, that's that's so awesome. And I think, you know, I really love that as a leader, how you've really pulled out everyone, you know, on the team and, and given them. That's why I, I think it's amazing. And I think, you know, to me it's kind of a no brainer on the outside looking at it because it's such, such an amazing, incredible website.

^{Joe Fox 00:04:31:25 - 00:04:59:10}
But to your point, I really love that methodology of of Roswell, where it's like, yes, we can be creative and yes, we can do all of these amazing design components, but if it isn't a good customer experience and it doesn't convert, then what's the point? And I agree, there are some interesting websites out there that have really, really, really hard, you know, kind of well, I wouldn't say hard but difficult sort of customer journeys built into them. But then when you see something like the DVF website, you can see why you won. So congratulations again.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:04:59:13 - 00:05:16:07}
You know team at Roswell. And fun fact why I don't think people realize this is that we, had a metaphorical gun to our head because this had to be live by the middle of February. I know it's boring, but.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:05:16:07 - 00:05:36:15}
And we started, designing it just before, the holiday break, like mid December. We were in development over the holidays. Development? In January, this was, you know, Claudia as a dear friend, but also a very close colleague of mine. And, that was her deadline. And I let her know, like, hey, we're going to figure it out.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:05:36:15 - 00:05:54:14}
We're going to do it. And so we pulled out all the big guns at Roswell, work over the holiday through the January period, and we got it live when it needed to be.

^{Joe Fox 00:05:54:14 - 00:06:16:03}
I absolutely loved that. Yeah. Once again, like just a very solid Testament testament to the ethos of you and the team of of making it work regardless.So absolutely about that. And it's award winning as well. So it's not like, yeah, it's not like it was a rushed product. So yeah that's incredible. That's incredible. Yeah. So Nihar, you know, we've done we've dive straight into to Roswell, we've dug straight into, you know, kind of some of the current projects or recent projects that you've been working on.

^{Joe Fox 00:06:16:03 - 00:06:37:14}
But I'd love, for the audience, it's a wide range of audience here. We've got obviously those in our ecosystem that we call friends and partners. And then there's obviously going to be a lot of merchants tuning into this. So I'd love it if you could just sort of touch on, you know, you mentioned how long Roswell has been around. Can you touch a little bit on Roswell's kind of journey, but also your journey and your background?

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:06:37:21 - 00:06:59:05}
I mean, you and I have chatted at length about this in New York over lunches and all of those sorts of things, and I think that's one of the reasons why we're such close friends is both of us have had interesting backgrounds, but can you chat to yours a little bit for the audience?

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:07:00:02 - 00:07:18:07}
Yeah, well, I appreciate that, Joe. I have had a very unique journey here at Roswell. And prior to that as well, too, most people don't know, if you check my LinkedIn, you probably do. But I worked in the music business for the first 13 years of my career, from 2001 to 2014. Record labels all over New York.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:07:18:10 - 00:07:35:27}
I thought that really was, my dream and, the direction I wanted to take my life in. But towards the end of my, journey in and, in music, I was, trying to get a job in tech, and I was looking back at all the different, failures of the music business, in my humble opinion.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:07:36:00 - 00:07:59:07}
In 2000, 2001, they tried to sue Napster instead of trying to monetize it. So I try to sue teenagers in the middle of nowhere America instead of trying to monetize Napster. Not a smart way to alienate your your core audience. And then from there, in 2002, Steve Jobs comes to New York. This is, urban legend, but I kind of believe it and tells all the record labels I got this thing called the iPod.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:07:59:07 - 00:08:24:27}
I just want you guys to create a digital music store. And he said, what are you talking about, Steve? We're going to sell CDs. And Steve Jobs goes back to, back to the Bay and basically creates iTunes and music business. The, basically has to pay $0.30 on the dollar for every track that's sold for the next 10 to 15 years straight around in 2009, 2010, and where it became super ubiquitous and again, they fell asleep at the wheel instead of creating their own, streaming platform.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:08:24:27 - 00:08:42:24}
Now Spotify has the the, the overwhelming majority of the market share in the US and probably, I don't know about the rest of the world, but, if it's anything like the US and it's a, it's a massive market share and, you know, seeing that they were just dropping the ball and, digital disruption was happening.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:08:42:27 - 00:09:03:08}
Everywhere you go, I realize I need to make a move. I tried to get a job at Spotify. I applied to 30 positions, at least. Couldn't get an interview to say my life. And then, I reached out to, a recruiter there that was, a bridesmaid at my best friend's, wedding. He was, his his wife's bridesmaid was a recruiter at Spotify.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:09:03:08 - 00:09:24:14}
And I asked her, I said, hey, man. Hey, Jenny. Rather, how come I'm not even getting a, an interview, much less a phone call back? And she said to me, you are. You have a great resume if you want to work in music. But this isn't a music company. It's a tech company. My head exploded, and I basically, you know, she saw the panic in my eyes and she said, hey, well, you know, you know, Hugh, he's got this.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:09:24:14 - 00:09:45:15}
He's my best friend since I was eight years old. Elementary school, middle school, high school, University of Michigan. Together, next door neighbors, that kind of vibe. And, and he's like, you know, he's got this development shop called Roseville Studios. Maybe you can go see if you need some help. And then after about 3 to 6 months, you can come back and, and reapply and you'll have tech, tech on your resume.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:09:45:15 - 00:09:50:18}
And I was like, that's a genius idea, cause you said absolutely come over. You know, we need some help in biz dev

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:09:51:21 - 00:10:11:15}
And you need to help with business development, marketing, operations, scaling, all of that. And and obviously, that's what I knew how to do, but I don't necessarily in tech came aboard. And, oddly enough, obviously it was called Roswell Studios. I came aboard in 2014 as the first, you know, hire, if you will.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:10:11:17 - 00:10:28:13}
And, I taught myself the code. I'm not a developer by any means. What would take me a week would probably take a developer a half hour. But I just wanted to know the languages. I wanted to immerse myself and become a sponge in the industry. 2015 Shopify goes public. We had one Shopify brand in our portfolio.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:10:28:14 - 00:10:46:26}
We were small. We were six, seven, eight people. We had one Shopify brand, that we were doing some work for. And that I saw was happening over at Shopify. And I said us like, we could be one out of a trillion dev shops, or we could be an elite e-commerce agency that does killer development.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:10:46:26 - 00:11:07:18}
And that was the start of our journey. Became a Shopify Plus partner in 2016. One of the first originals, a Klaviyo partner in 2016 when there were 25 people, nuts. We were reaching when they were 15 people. And so we you know, luck favors the prepared. I think we knew the direction we want to go in.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:11:07:18 - 00:11:29:24}
And we really built Roswell on the bedrock and foundation of partnerships grow. Being a very strong partner of ours and instrumental in a lot of the brands that we work with. And, and that kind of understanding that you're not you're not able to do this on your own is really what, helped Roswell grow. We we, worked well with our partners, including Shopify.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:11:29:26 - 00:11:44:12}
And, and basically, started bringing deals to the table. You know, one thing that people don't get in this industry is that just because you become a partner of a tech platform, it doesn't mean that you're going to turn on the spigot where you're just going to be getting a conveyor belt of leads into your agency.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:11:44:12 - 00:12:02:05}
It's a trust battery that has to be charged both ways. You got to bring opportunities to the table and that bring opportunities to the table to you. Absolutely. If they bring an opportunity to the table to you and, it's it's, it doesn't work out, you still got to crush it. Just because they, throw you a bone that they don't know if it tastes good or not.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:12:02:05 - 00:12:23:27}
But at the end of the day, what you do with that opportunity, is, is what the platform is going to realize, the integrity that you have as an agency and how you operate in both good and bad situations. Because that's real life. And, understanding that has really been, instrumental in our growth at Roswell. Back then, we were just, you know, about 8 or 9 people, just doing development.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:12:24:00 - 00:12:49:12}
Kind of focused on just focusing more so on e-commerce. Back then, it was probably, 20% of our business. Now it's nearly, 95, if not more percent of our business expanded into design as anyone would, doing UI, UX, design. And now we're now a full service agency doing creative engineering and growth marketing services, creative focus on UI, UX design, branding, logos, as well as content creation.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:12:49:15 - 00:13:12:27}
We're doing photography, videography as well as 3D art, and I are, on the engineering side, core competency, everything you would expect systems, integrations, custom Shopify theme development, subscriptions, integrations, tech platform integrations. Basically fitting square Pegs in around holes. My business partner, Hugh Lim, he is like neo, from The Matrix. He just he's like, there was, I swear to God.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:13:12:27 - 00:13:30:19}
I mean, he's the most authentic, gifted solutions engineer I ever met in my life. And, well, our our motto of the engineering division is something we're very proud of. The only limitation is your imagination. If you can think it, we're going to build it. And we stand by that. We don't ask brands, why would you want to do that?

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:13:30:19 - 00:14:06:25}
We say, why not? You know, and and make it's work. And then finally, the the growth marketing side, full funnel lifecycle marketing, everything from, performance marketing, SEO, affiliate social media, influencer marketing to retention, which is, a key, a key reason why we partnered with grow wave everything from, email, SMS, loyalty reviews, wish list, customer experience, everything that, allows a customer to, maximize their, their experience on site and how to bring them back because everybody understands that returning users convert at double the overall conversion rate, and you don't have to pay for it.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:14:07:02 - 00:14:24:19}
I mean, yeah, you have to pay incremental for the platform, but you're not paying, you know, you're not giving, Google Mark Zuckerberg, you know, $5 for a click anymore, you know. Yeah. And then back, with your own ability to retarget. So anyways, that's a similar summation in Roswell. We're now a team of 50 people.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:14:24:21 - 00:14:45:20}
And growing. We have 70 brands, and and growing. And we look at our brands like our children, like, you can't have a favorite one, and you want them all to succeed. You love that. That's, that's a very good collab. And, you know, once again, just congratulations on that success. Like, it's such, it's, I mean, just seeing the, you know, it's a roller coaster ride.

^{Joe Fox 00:14:45:21 - 00:15:08:21}
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There's no words, but but you're riding it very well, my friend. It's, it's it's really cool to see. And I think, you know, I, I love nothing more than working with good partners such as yourself. I love these relationships and friendships we develop. But I, as part of that, it's like it's it's seeing your friends win that really makes you sick, happy.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:15:08:21 - 00:15:31:13}
Right? Like, like absolutely nothing to do with Broadway. Absolutely nothing to do with our friendship. And besides the fact that I get to see my friend win and I really love that and I enjoy that, and I love that you set point, man, because that's something that, you know, is very unique to our community. And, and I'm part of chat groups and, and, meetups in New York, which is all agency owners and whatnot.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:15:31:13 - 00:15:51:09}
And we get together, we're not, talking about, what our bank accounts are and in terms of our business checking accounts or whatnot, it's about what, and who's who's bigger. It's about, what are you learning? What are you hearing? Talking about how are tariffs impacting your brand? How is your pipeline? What are you doing that's successful?

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:15:51:09 - 00:16:19:24}
What should I avoid? What tech platforms are the ones that should be on the horizon? We're all sharing information. We're frenemies. We're competitors. Right. You know, and I've, you know, I've been on deals with, with, you know, some of my dearest agency friends at barrel at Max first, at, midnight genius and Amex as well to shout out to John Peter and yeah, and Jason and, we, you know, we've been on deals together and we know we are and we're like, hey, good luck, man. You know it's not. And if they go with you, you know what? They they made a great choice. And I like I love that because at the end of the day it's about, camaraderie, not, you know, competition and, skullduggery, if you will, you know.

^{Joe Fox 00:16:19:24 - 00:16:49:00}
Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're so lucky to be in an ecosystem that has that, because I think there are a lot of there's two things I think about partnerships that you can always kind of like guarantee in our space.

^{Joe Fox 00:16:49:00 - 00:17:09:28}
One is that we probably travel a lot more than most other industries. I mean, we're chatting about that off air, and I want to touch on that and look a little bit as well. But also to you can you can count on your competitors essentially rooting for you. And I think that's amazing. Like that is such an underrated, you know, kind of thing.

^{Joe Fox 00:17:09:28 - 00:17:35:22}
I mean, for example, like my, my wife being an attorney, it is not like that between attorney firms, I can tell you that right now. And, you know, I have a lot of friends who, who, you know, property developers, you know, here and in Australia. And it is not locked out there. So I think we're very, you know, blessed, blessed for a lot of reasons, but certainly blessed in the fact that, you know, we all get to work together and everyone wants each other to win.

^{Joe Fox 00:17:35:22 - 00:18:09:01}
And that certainly is enough work for everyone in the space, that's for sure. And right off margins. Yeah, nice lifts, all boats, you know. And I think that's something special, within our industry. And I hope that never changes. Absolutely, absolutely. So we touched on we you know, we've touched on the your journey, Roswell's journey. We've touched on, you know, some things that are happening in the landscape, particularly then, I'd love to, you know, maybe pick pick on sort of one of those particular topics around what we're finding in the market now.

^{Joe Fox 00:18:09:01 - 00:18:29:07}
Right? Because I think there's there's just a ton of uncertainty, particularly, you know, in the US and sort of, I guess in the in the world in general and E-com at the moment, just with like some of the things you mentioned, tariffs, economy, all of that sort of stuff. I, I've had some good conversations about this on the podcast.

^{Joe Fox 00:18:29:10 - 00:18:51:18}
And I really love to dive into that with, you know, it's like, what, a couple of things that you think merchants should really be doing at this particular time. I'm going to caveat that with my, you know, point that I keep driving home is if you've considered working with a partner agency at the moment to guide you and navigate you through this, but you haven't done that yet.

^{Joe Fox 00:18:51:20 - 00:19:15:09}
You need to. If you're a merchant who's in that position now more than ever, you need the right team and the right external team of experts who know every facet of this to be working for you and on your side. So that's I'm going to caveat with that. But what are a couple of things. The how you think that, you know, merchants can be doing today to alleviate some of the pressure and stress they're feeling?

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:19:15:11 - 00:19:36:00}
Absolutely. So I, I've been talking a lot about this, and I think you hit the nail on the head, working with an agency, you're getting the, the, the amalgamated experience of, of, them working with multiple brands and multiple verticals, seeing everything from all sides of the field. And that's really the advantage of working with an agency rather than trying to do it yourself.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:19:36:02 - 00:20:02:23}
We work in a wide variety of industry verticals, everything from your standard beauty, haircare, wellness, jewelry, fashion, luxury goods, apparel and accessories to also CPG home goods and, medical devices and medical supplies. And what we're seeing right now with the, with the state of the economy and e-commerce as a whole. And I surveyed, you know, a good portion of the of our 70 brands to be able to get some information because I wanted to know what was happening on the ground level.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:20:02:23 - 00:20:23:27}
And this is information that spans December, January, February and March. So take it where you, take it for what it's worth in terms of the timing, by the time this is this gets released, you it may everything may have changed, you know, because that's and that's the thing that I want to, stress is that, day to day to day, uncertainty is not working for brands.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:20:23:27 - 00:20:40:20}
It's not working for anybody. It's not working for the economy. It's not working for, for the for customers. It's not working for brands network for anybody. Not knowing and not being able to plan is what's disrupting everything. If there was, and if this was like, this is a stake in the ground, this is the way forward.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:20:40:24 - 00:20:56:28}
This is the new normal. Brands can plan for that. They can they can figure out what they need to do. But changing the rules on a day to day basis is, you know, the tariffs are here, they're gone tomorrow. The tariffs are here, but not for you, for China only and so on and so forth.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:20:57:04 - 00:21:20:02}
It's just like, hey, just give us a break, tell us what you're going to do and make us, and then we'll be able to plan and move forward. It's trickling down. Slowly and surely. I mean, they're saying that, in certain places, shelves are going to be relatively on stocked in the next month or so, and the impacts of these tariffs from April 2nd are going to be felt, you know, 60, 90, 120 days later.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:21:20:02 - 00:21:46:15}
And there's other ripple effect. We have brands that pre bought inventory, in the December, January and February periods in anticipation of this, which causes a massive amount of supply. And if the consumer confidence level as tracked by University of Michigan continues to go down down and down, you have you have an issue where demand is going to be decreasing, supply is going to be large with the brands that do have it and and not, continue with this verbal diarrhea.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:21:46:15 - 00:22:04:12}
But I've talked so much and I want to be able to condense as much as I can in the little time that we have, you, you have, certain brands that are increasing their prices due to the fact that the tariffs are hitting them because they don't have inventory. And then you have brands that why not increase the prices to I have the inventory, I can increase my margins and all that compounds.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:22:04:12 - 00:22:26:00}
And who gets hurt. The customer. And then the brands are having a difficult time planning for the future. Advertising gets hit and agencies like us can get hit. If you're, if you're planning your advertising budget based on your gross profit margins and desired net income and Roas targets, and all of a sudden you don't have the inventory to sell or your prices have to go higher.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:22:26:00 - 00:22:53:02}
The unit economics kicks in at that point, and ultimately you have to pull back your advertising budget. But why all these things? Start contracting the, the, contracting all together like a black hole. And you know what happens when it contracts too much? You have an explosion. And that's really what I think is happening right now. I think, you know, the the current administration in the United States, if they were just to give us guidance and basically say this is how it's going to be for the next 2 to 3 years, okay.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:22:53:04 - 00:23:10:15}
Yeah. All right. I don't like it. But I am not in a position to be able to change it. So yeah, I did at least tell me that now I can guide our team, I can guide our brands. People can make decisions we don't have to worry about, okay. Do I, should I hire now or is Q3 going to be a dangerous situation?

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:23:10:15 - 00:23:30:25}
I don't know. And not being able to know is is is what's really hurting everybody right now. The uncertainty, you know, you can see what's happening in the in the stock market. Uncertainty is not, what they want in the stock market is a predictor of the, of the future because it's essentially, an understanding of the temperature of where we think we're going to go, not where we've been. And those signs aren't. Well, and that's something I'm very concerned about. And it's what all of our brands are concerned about as well.

^{Joe Fox 00:23:30:27 - 00:23:59:26}
Yeah. No, absolutely. I think it's, you know, you're so right. It's you can plan through anything and be prepared for anything if you have some clarity. And I think the really annoying or confusing part of all of this with the current administration is that they could provide that clarity, but it feels like it's being used as a political tool.

^{Joe Fox 00:23:59:29 - 00:24:21:29}
And and it's a little bit frustrating. I don't want to I try I try not to dive into politics too much on this, especially being an Australian, but it's just interesting, you know, kind of where this is going and where and where it could be going. So I really hope, and you know, on an optimistic note, I hope the administration can provide that clarity sort of sooner rather than later.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:24:22:01 - 00:24:49:06}
So for everyone. And that's not being political. It's just being real. I mean, yes, it's it's like, you know, if, if, if you've made a decision, that's fine. I have to live with it, you know, for the next three and a half years, maybe even longer, who knows with that? Well, who get whoever gets elected next. But at the end of the day, you know, you just I want to be able to plan, you know, and, and, you know, the obviously there's a saying that, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. But if you get a punched in the face over and over and over again, it's like, come on. Like, let me give me a break here, you know?

^{Joe Fox 00:24:49:06 - 00:25:14:11}
No. Yeah, yeah. We need the round to end so that we can move and move on to the next round. Catch our breath and move for that. Absolutely. And I mean it that that once again, you know, it's a testament to your strength as a leader and your care for your customers in the fact that you want to, you know, be able to guide them through everything that's going on.

^{Joe Fox 00:25:14:11 - 00:25:37:21}
So I'm in agreements with you. I think, you know, hopefully we can get some of that clarity soon. So I guess I know that you and I can chat forever. We always, often do when we catch up in person. I think, you know, just to kind of round things out nicely. Two quick questions. One is, where can everyone reach you?

^{Joe Fox 00:25:37:22 - 00:25:55:06}
What's the best? What is the best way to stay up to date with the awards? You know, the the advisory boards and stuff that you are all of those sorts of things. Where can people do that anyhow?

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:25:55:08 - 00:26:18:18}
Appreciate that. Yeah. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Ni Haqqani, my name is down in the, the lower left of the screen. Find me on LinkedIn. At, follow me there. Roswell NYC is, our LinkedIn, company page. Please check us out there. But on our website, you can find, you can find us and fill out the contact form or email us at build my business @ Roswellstudios.com. Again, that's build my business all one word at Roswellstudios.com. Because our motto is that we're in the business of building businesses. And that's what we do really well.

^{Joe Fox 00:26:18:18 - 00:26:38:04}
Awesome. Love that. And, I'll make sure that, those links and everything are in the show notes for sure. And I guess one last question, because I like to do this with everyone that comes on. I think I know the answer to this already.

_{Joe Fox 00:26:38:06 - 00:26:59:07}
And you can't say a person or people, you know, we were talking about it earlier. We both travel. So, you know, all of us travel a lot in this. You've got travel coming up. I know you've just been to like 7 or 8 different places in a very short span of time. But what is the one thing that you can't travel without or that or that you need with you? Like, what's one thing that you rely on a lot? I think I know the answer to this one, but I'd love for you to share it with the audience.

^{Nihar Kulkarni 00:26:59:07 - 00:27:18:11}
Oh, man. I mean, God, of course, is my laptop. But I mean, that's the mentality that I have being an ambitious individual, but I actually have this thing that I travel with it, and I highly recommend it.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:27:18:11 - 00:27:38:18}
It's called, the McKenzie, lumbar, back support role. You can get it for like 20 bucks on Amazon. And the reason that the reason you have that is that when you're traveling, you're oftentimes hunching your back and people don't realize your back is like like this. Right? And if it's crunched like that, the gel between the different vertebrae starts squeezing out.

_{Nihar Kulkarni 00:27:38:18 - 00:28:00:16}
And that's why a lot of people have lower back pain. So if you get that, you, put your, your butt all the way to the back of the seat and it goes right into your lumbar, and it forces you to have that S-curve when you're sitting on a plane for six hours, if you're sitting in a hotel room and whatever you're doing, and you would be surprised the amount of, relief that it gives you, from, just keeping your back straight all the time.

_{Nihark Kulkarni 00:28:00:16 - 00:28:19:12}
And, because I travel so much, I carry everywhere with me. It's not a, it's not a shameless plug by any means. It's 20 bucks on Amazon. It's been around for years. But you should definitely look for it. It's a Mackenzie rollerball. So I roller, lumbar support thing, and, it hooks right on any. See, you can put it right down there and it'll change. It's changed my life.

^{Joe Fox 00:28:19:15 - 00:28:41:09}
Amazing, amazing. I love that, and I think that's, I mean, you and I have spoken about this before, but the whole wellness on the road contact, empowerment that that is like a very quick, easy for the audience. Really love that. And it's relevant for a home too, so that's awesome. Nihar. Thank you so much, man.

^{Joe Fox 00:28:41:09 - 00:29:07:11}
I'm really excited to do a second part of this. But I just want to say again, you know, thank you for being a great friend. Thank you for being a great partner. Congratulations again on all of this success. And then, hopefully when we catch up in person, it won't be, won't be, too far away. But also hopefully we're able to talk about this, relief and, and sort of, I guess clear path and clarity that that's happening in the market at the moment.

^{Joe Fox 00:29:07:11 - 00:29:28:15}
But, once again, audience, please, please, please, I, implore you to connect with me. Consume the Roswell content. Consume the hearts content. Reach out if you're if you're interested in having a chat. Very, very friendly team over there. And as you can hear, absolute award winners who get the job done, adult business is very well.

^{Joe Fox 00:29:28:15 - 00:29:47:11}
So Nihar, thank you so much for coming on. My really appreciate it. And we'll connect very shortly after the audience. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain, grow, thrive. You can check out all the shownotes below and we'll see you again soon.

Thank you. Appreciate you.